For first time in 3.5 years, Knesset begins session on passing a budget

Marathon debates on approving a state budget began Tuesday in the Knesset and were expected to continue through the night and the following day as the government aimed to break a 3.5-year spell during which no national budget was passed.

It marked the first time that a government has presented a state budget for final approval in parliament since 2018, due to a prolonged political deadlock that saw successive governments fall before they could bring a plan to the Knesset.

Proceedings began with a message from Knesset Finance Committee chairman Alex Kushnir, who was followed by Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman.

In the hours to come, each lawmaker will have a chance to speak for 30 minutes, a process expected to continue at least until Wednesday night.

After that, senior cabinet members will address the Knesset, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett set to speak at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

Voting on the budget will begin late Wednesday. A final vote on the budget is not expected to be held until Thursday night or Friday morning. The prolonged voting process is due to hundreds of preliminary votes on specific objections lawmakers can raise on the budget and the accompanying Arrangements Bill, which contains the details of how the financial plan will be put into practice. Both bills must be passed before a November 14 deadline.

“I am excited to present before you the budget proposal for 2021-2022, together with the Arrangements Bill, which is heaped with reforms aimed to help weaker strata [of society] to deal with the cost of living,” Kushnir said.

“After two years of stagnation, the enslavement of the Israeli economy to personal and political interests, we are here to put an end to this,” he said.

Liberman said he would deliver his full remarks on the budget alongside his cabinet peers on Wednesday, but that he had nevertheless taken to the podium to speak of the “symbolism” of the moment.

“We waited for this day three and a half years,” Liberman said.

The government has until November 14 to pass the budget. Failure to do so will automatically trigger fresh elections, which would be Israel’s fifth in three years.

The last time an Israeli government managed to pass a budget was in March 2018. Failure to approve the budget was what brought down the previous government late last year.

The budget bill for 2021 passed its first reading in September by a 59-54 vote, with the 2022 budget getting the go-ahead with a vote of 59 to 53.

Heading to a UN climate summit in Glasgow on Sunday, Bennett was confident the budget would pass despite “desperate” attempts by the opposition to prevent its passage and effectively topple the government.

“The budget will pass because Israel needs stability… because the country needs good, calm management… because no one wants to return to the endless elections cycle,” Bennett said.

The diverse composition of the government led by Bennett — made up of right-wing, centrist and left-wing parties and an Islamist faction — is complicating the effort to pass the budget, with the opposition of a single lawmaker theoretically able to bring down the coalition’s wafer-thin majority of 61 lawmakers out of the Knesset’s 120.